


What Are You Gonna Do About It

by 8sword



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cancer, Discussion of Death, F/F, medical setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Draw me like one of your French girls," Emma would say if she was here, and Claire wants to scream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Are You Gonna Do About It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vilupe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vilupe/gifts).



> I've been sitting on this for a while. Decided to pull it out and finish it off when all the Claire news broke today. It takes place far in the future, when Claire and Emma are living on their own as adults. 
> 
> Warnings for discussions of death and cancer, medical stuff.

They're twenty-eight when Claire comes out of the shower in a towel. It's just weird enough for Emma to do a double-take when she glances up from where she's sprawled on the bed with her Kindle. Claire usually comes out of the bathroom fully dressed or completely naked--the whole shrinking-maiden-in-a-towel thing isn't her style. But she has one of their green towels wrapped tightly around her, arm across her chest to hold it up, and her eyes are focused inward, distant as Emma looks at her.

Emma lowers her Kindle. A lot of the time, Claire slides into the bed next to her after her night showers, lets Emma get an eyeful and maybe mouthful of that warm, smelling-of-coconut-body-wash skin. Today, though, Claire goes to the dresser, putting her hand on the knob of her underwear drawer but not opening it.

Emma sits up the rest of the way. "Claire?"

Claire turns. Her eyes are alert and aware again, her eyebrow lifted expectantly. "Yes?"

Emma studies her. She glances down at the towel again, at the tight hold Claire has on it to keep it over her chest.

Her eyes go back to Claire's face. "What is it?"

Claire makes a face at her. "Nothing," she says, and turns back to the mirror, dropping her towel. Emma get a glimpse of her long pale back and paler buttocks before she's pulling an over-large sweatshirt over her head, pulling her hair out from under the collar to slap wetly against the hood. The blue hem just skims the back of her thighs as she turns to pick up the wet towel with one foot, kicking it up into her hand and taking it back into the bathroom. She emerges a minute later to crawl up onto the bed, knees knocking into Emma's through the comforter.

"You're gonna get the pillow wet," Emma says.

Claire cocks a _and what are you gonna do about it?_ eyebrow at her. Emma huffs and kicks the covers off her legs so that she can pull them over both of their legs. Claire loops her hair up around her hand in a sloppy bun and pulls her hood up over it. She settles back onto the pillow on her stomach so Emma can pull the comforter up to their shoulders, and with her arms folded under her head the way they are, hands clasped in front of her, Emma might have said Claire looked like she was praying, if it wasn't a better-known fact than even Dean's obsession with his car that Claire Novak doesn't pray.

She scoots down under the blanket and huddles a little closer to Claire. Claire stiffens, a little, and doesn't roll over to wrap around Emma the way she might have, but she shifts her leg, a little, just enough for her foot to tuck between Emma's, and that's enough.

 

But a few days later that Claire's in the shower again, before dinner this time, and her phone rings. Emma puts the lid on the simmering rice pilaf and goes to grab it in case it's Dean or Cas. It's neither of their names on the display, though, just a number with the local area code, and Emma answers it uncertainly. "Hello…?"

"Hello, I'm calling for Claire Novak?"

"This is her partner," Emma says. "She's busy at the moment, can I help you?"

"I'm calling from Dr. Harude's office to confirm her appointment for tomorrow at nine-thirty."

Emma's eyes flick to the closed bathroom door.

"Ma'am?"

"She'll be there," Emma says automatically. "Thank you."

"Thank you," replies the woman, and disconnects the call.

Emma sets the phone back down. Goes to the kitchen, and the calendar Claire keeps taped on the inside of the pantry door there, marked with big court dates and family birthdays and Cas's conferences. There's nothing written in tomorrow's square, nothing about a doctor's appointment, and Emma goes back to the rice pilaf bubbling on the stove, her stomach tense.

  

Claire doesn't say anything when she comes out of the shower. Or when they sit down for dinner. Or when they get into bed that night, or when they get out of it the next morning. She doesn't say anything when she kisses Emma goodbye before striding out to her car in her work heels, or when she gets home that evening, wearing a pair of pumps that don't match her pencil skirt instead.

Emma orders takeout. She's too keyed-up to make anything. Too keyed-up to eat, too, and when the boxes of Thai food get there, hers sits untouched on her plate as Claire pushes hers around with her white plastic fork.

"Um," Emma says. "Um."

Claire looks up. She's tensed, above her food, ready for a fight; Emma can smell it like blood in the air. "What?"

"If anything--whatever's--" Emma takes a deep breath. "Me. I'm here. I'm. Whatever you need. Okay?"

 Claire's hand is very tight around her fork. Then she puts it down and comes around the table. She pulls Emma's chair away from the table and sits down in her lap. Her shoulders curve in on herself, and she burrows her head under Emma's ear and exhales shaky against her neck when Emma's arms come up around her hesitantly.

"Hey," she whispers. "Hey, baby. You're okay. I've got you."

Claire doesn't cry. Not really. She just curls in tighter and holds onto Emma's shirt harder and brings her knees up into the chair. They dig into Emma's ribs, and Emma barely notices, just gets her other arm around Claire's legs to bring all of her into this protection. She feels wildly helpless in a way she's never been, even when she was on the run, about to betray her mother and their tribe.

"Do you want us to call Dean?" she whispers.

Claire shakes her head against Emma's neck. Stays where she is, trembling and hot, until Emma's legs are asleep under Claire's weight and then Claire shudders, one more time, and takes Emma's hand in her own and says, "Feel it."

Her hand guides Emma's to her breast. Presses it against the side of it, below her armpit, and Emma presses down gently, confused, distracted by trying to read Claire's expression. Then she feels it, and she stops.

"I felt it," Claire says. "In the shower."

Emma breathes her name.

Claire says, "Sorry," and starts to cry again.

 

The doctor felt the lump, too. She says it could be normal. She says it could be cancer. She is sending Claire for an ultrasound, and an MRI. The imaging center will call her in two to three days, she said. They have a protocol for this. They will take care of her. Please, please don't worry.

Emma holds Claire tighter as she talks. As the darkness falls in the windows outside and the pad thai congeals in its cartons. When Claire's done talking, they're both quiet. Consolations would be empty; "I'm sure it'll be fine" just as hollow, and so they go to bed.

This time, Claire lets Emma hold her as neither of them fall asleep.

 

Claire is human.

Claire is _human_.

This is the first time Emma realizes what that really means.

 

Cold in the waiting room. Elderly men with their wives, middle-aged women on their own, reading magazines. All of them glancing curiously at Claire and Emma where they sit in the corner in their scarves and boots, some without comprehension and some with too much.

A woman in a black skirt and subdued pearls opens the door beside the receptionist and calls Claire's name. Claire gets up.

"You want me to come with you?" Emma says. Low. Desperate.

Claire shakes her head once, tight. She holds Emma's glove balled-up in her fingers, though, as she follows the woman through the door. It closes behind them.

 

They take her into a room with chairs and a big plasma screen television showing a home renovation show. There are women in white fluffy robes and winter boots sitting in the chairs, looking at magazines or speaking quietly to each other.

The woman in the dress opens one of the doors along the back wall. Inside, there's one of the robes hanging from a hook on the door, and several wooden hangers.

"For your clothes," she tells Claire. "Everything off from the waist up. Did you wear deodorant?"

Claire shakes her head. She'd waited for Emma to make jokes about it the whole drive here, but she hadn't, her knuckles and the skin around her mouth white as they drove.

"Good," says the woman with a kind smile. "Come out when you're done."

 

Claire waits in the room with the TV for a long time. Shifting uncomfortably in her chair with the robe's fluffy material against her nipples as she sweats, as one woman after another is called in ahead of her. She watches a kitchen's linoleum get torn up, watches a pool's vinyl not reach far enough to fill it. She presses her palm against the side of her breast as if the lump will have disappeared.

It has not.

Finally a woman in pink scrubs comes for her. "Claire," she says, and leads her into a dark room with a big white machine. There's a plastic shelf for her to put her breast on, and a small sticky plastic dot to go where the lump is. The woman says, "This might get uncomfortable, okay?" and Claire wants to crawl away from the kindness in her voice, because the kindness is for someone who might be receiving the news that she has something terrible growing inside her.

(Was it inside her mom? she thinks as the plastic presses down on her breast. Presses, presses, presses. Was it there already, when she died? Too small to be noticed?)

Squeezing. Squeezing. Claire stays very still, eyes fixed on the blank cream wall. She can smell her own sweat.

"There." The plastic shelf stops pressing. "You're done, sweetheart."

Claire lets out the smallest, shakiest breath. Steps back, pulling the robe back around her.

They take her back out to the waiting room. "We'll do the ultrasound as soon as the room opens up," the woman in pink says, and Claire's relief sinks back into dread. She sits in the TV room, which has been populated by all new women in boots and robes, all the others cleared to leave, all the others given the all-clear, and Claire curls her fists over her knees.

The room with the ultrasound is even darker, lit only by the white and blue glow of the screen. It smells of potpourri. Claire climbs onto the tall table in her boots, and when the ultrasound technician arranges her with her arm draped over her head in an awkward, contorted pose, a shout of hysterical laughter nearly escapes her. _Draw me like one of your French girls_ , Emma would say if she was here, and Claire wants to scream, wants to rip and tear, at the idea that after everything, the angels and demons and Amazons, a piece of her body deciding to grow too fast could be what stops it all.

The technician takes a long time running the wand over Claire's chest. Her armpit, her breast, the space beneath her collarbone. Her sweat is even more pungest in the icy air, and Claire can't stop shivering as the wand travels through the cold gel, spreading it. She bites her lip, staring at the ceiling.

"There we go, honey." The tech pulls back. "I think we've got enough to look at now."

"Do I go back out?" Claire pulls the robe back around herself, sitting up. Her boots crinkle the white paper covering the table. She doesn't think she will be able to sit in that room again, watching men with spray tans tear up houses. She thinks she will walk out of the room in her fluffy white robe and crawl into Emma's car.

The tech looks at her. Seems to come to a decision. "You stay here," she says. "I'll come get you once the doctor's looked at them."

The door shuts behind her.

Claire looks around the room. Listens to the hum of the ultrasound monitor. Leans forward to peer at the black and white images on the screen.

Her phone presses against her hipbone. She pulls it out and texts, **you there?**

 _r u ok_ comes the answer immediately. Then, in answer to Claire's question: _yes_

**They did all the scans. Waiting on the doctor to look at them now.**

_do u want me to come back with u?_

Claire plucks at the laces of her boots. Then she texts, **yes please**

 

Emma's led back by a medical assistant in Winnie the Pooh Bear scrubs. The MA pokes her head into Claire's room first, then steps back to let Emma in, and Emma hesitates in the doorway, holding a white knit blanket over her arm. She looks uncharacteristically young after the forties-plus women in their robes in the TV room, and Claire wonders, for a stab of a minute, if she looks that young, before Emma's holding out the blanket to her.

"Kinda cold in here."

Claire takes it. Emma doesn't move any further into the room as the door shuts behind her, as if unsure of her welcome, and regret and desperation and affection swoop through Claire all at once. She reaches for Emma, and Emma stumbles forward as if pulled by an invisible string, leans her hip against the edge of the table, wraps her hand around Claire's ankle and tangles her fingers in her boot laces, twirling them until they're knotted around her knuckles, secure. Claire wraps the blanket tight around her shoulders and leans into Emma's.

After a few minutes, she moves her chin against Emma's arm. "Scale of one to ten. How armpit-y do I smell?"

Emma's quiet for a while, eyes on the ultrasound machine's screen. Then she stirs herself, eyes flicking up to Claire's. "Are decimals allowed?"

"Only if your answer is less than a whole number."

"What about for scientific notation?"

"With a negative exponent?"

Emma grins into the fluffy sleeve of her robe. "No."

"Then they're not allowed," Claire says, and kicks one leg imperiously.

They fall quiet again for a while.

"What do we do?" Claire whispers. "If it's cancer."

"They remove it."

"It's not that easy." Claire's desperation comes out as anger. "I'm young, if it happens once it's probably going to happen more--"

"Then we deal with that," Emma says stubbornly.

"It's not that easy, Emma!"

"Well, what else are we supposed to do?" Emma demands. "What else are we supposed to do, Claire? Say, _too bad, guess you're going to die_?!"

Claire doesn't say anything. Emma glares at her. Looks away.

"It's _not_ easy," she says after a minute. "God, Claire, it's not easy at all."

Claire's hand tightens around Emma's. She's quiet for another long minute, and then she says quietly, "Bet you're glad not to be human now."

An anguished look flies across Emma's face.

The door opens with a knock. The ultrasound tech from before steps inside, pauses when she sees Emma.

"She can hear it," Claire says quickly. Like someone touching something hot, wanting to drop it before it burns them. "What--what did the doctor--"

The tech is smiling. "He doesn't think it looks risky enough to biopsy," she says. "Just fibrocystic tissue."

For a moment, they're both silent.

"That's good, right?" Emma says finally. "That means it's not--cancer?"

"Doesn't look like it right now," the woman says. "They'll be looking at the MRI results more closely, but the ultrasound looks good. Barring anything else, we'll see you back when you turn forty, Ms. Novak."

Claire can't quite move. She stumbles jumping down from the table, and Emma catches her arm. Walks so close to her as they head back into the TV room.

She feels hollowed-out, empty with the relief of it. Like the terror's been the only thing carrying her through the past week, a set of strings dragging her forward and now without them she's limp, can't move quite right, and Emma comes into the closet with her and peels her robe off and pulls her shirt back over her head and her arms through the sleeves like a child. She pulls Claire's hair out from beneath the collar of her sweatshirt with her hands, watching it settle down Claire's back, and then meets her eyes. Claire stares back, mute and trembling and warm.

Emma grasps her cold hands and kisses her. Just once, a press of lips against her mouth. Tears break free from Claire's eyes, hot on her face, and she turns her head into Emma's shoulder, lets herself be held close as they walk outside, back into the cold January morning in the parking lot. Thin, icy air that tastes like a second chance.

She can still smell her sweat through the layers of her shirt as she climbs into the car. Emma just hunkers down on the asphalt next to her, shielded from the wind by the open car door. Her hand is still around Claire's; she looks up at her with eyes that are still wide with the echo of fear. The realization that still sits there between them, now, like a pounding heart.

Maybe it didn't happen today. But someday…

Someday, things are going to end.

Claire reaches out. She fists her hand in Emma's jacket, and pulls her close, they crouch there, curled over each other, as snow starts to fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
